{"id":2154,"date":"2013-09-15T02:03:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T02:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=2154"},"modified":"2017-08-08T20:46:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T20:46:57","slug":"moving-on-by-denis-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/moving-on-by-denis-bell\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving On by Denis Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Catcher<\/a>
Catcher in the Rye by Dana Loberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moving On<\/h1>\n

Denis Bell<\/p>\n

\u201cPicked her up last week at Lincoln Mall. She\u2019s hot, man!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSweet. Been out much?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTook her to a dive in Old Town last night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u2019d that go?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA-okay!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGlad to hear it, man. You deserve some joy in your life, after the business with Charlotte.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAin\u2019t that the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBit rough, there, by the sound of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know the half of it. Five years. Everything hunky dory. Then she goes and has this major melt down. Just like that. Lucky to get out of there with my skin intact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus. What happened, man?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour guess is as good as mine. She just \u2026 exploded on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExploded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly way I can think to describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat set her off?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDamned if I know. Never saw it coming.\u201d
\n\u201cWeird. Something like this, you think there\u2019d have been signs that things weren\u2019t right. Signals along the way. A red light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d think, wouldn\u2019t you? That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been pondering myself. Racking my brains ever since it happened. I\u2019m thinking that perhaps the signs were there and I missed them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, seems like she was acting cranky for a while. Whining, like I wasn\u2019t treating her right. Sucks. I always did the best I could by her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it. I was saying to Sheila just the other day, never was a man so committed as old Bilbo \u2013 took care of her real good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI so much want to believe that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, well\u2026What happened to her afterwards?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think? They came and took her away. State Police. Fire Rescue. Looked like a scene from NCIS.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds like a total nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou haven\u2019t seen her since, I suppose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope. Nor do I intend to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just good to see you getting out and about again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I thought about it and thought about it and finally I figured, what the hell. The kind of shape she\u2019s in, no way she\u2019s ever gonna be \u2026 rehabilitated. Figured I needed to suck it up and cut.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSmart. Gotta be tough on you, though. After five years. Seeing how attached you were to her, and all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFive years, fifty years. What you gonna do, sit around the house forever moping over spilled milk? Can her and move on.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCourse, the whole frigging business is costing me an arm and a leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear your pain, man. Nothing comes cheap these days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. Gotta be worth every last penny, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNice to see you taking it so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLife has a way at times of compensating us for our losses. Wait till you catch a load of this hot little number I\u2019m into now!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCharlotte\u2019s replacement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYee-haw.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething a bit special, I\u2019m guessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCool. When can I meet\u2026?<\/p>\n

\u201cChristine. She\u2019s right outside as we speak. I asked the valet to pull her up to the back door.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPicked her up last week at Lincoln Mall. She\u2019s hot, man!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[364,273],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends-story","category-short-short"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3278,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154\/revisions\/3278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}